Who Created Bitcoin?

Published May 9th at 11:00am

In 2009 Satoshi Nakamoto first provided proof of concept for the first example of ‘Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that has since seen its use and value skyrocket. Although Nakamoto’s intentions appeared benevolent, the anonymous nature of Bitcoin saw it grow infamous in its association with illegal marketplaces on the Dark Web. However, there’s a problem - Satoshi Nakamoto has never existed. The name is merely a pseudonym for the mysterious, nameless creator. Nameless until now, that is.

Last week, an Australian businessman by the name of Craig Wright published a blog in which he claims to be the Bitcoin creator. Wright shared these claims with three media outlets (the BBC, The Economist,and GQ) alongside technical demonstrations designed to prove that he is the person who developed the first proof of concept on which Bitcoin is built. The demonstration was so convincing that even Gavin Andresen, one of the earliest programmers for the cryptocurrency and likely the one who has communicated most with Nakamoto, declared the claims legitimate.

So is that it...mystery solved? No. Far from it. Wright’s claim has been called into doubt due to the uncovering of a discrepancy in a key piece of his evidence. The digital signature used to back up his claim was first uploaded to the internet seven years ago, something that experts say means it cannot be used to prove his identity. The signature was created by Nakamoto in 2009 and has been publicly available ever since, there is no way it could have been created by Wright to prove his claim.

Security experts say that this discrepancy, alongside the lack of any other public technical evidence, suggests that Wright’s post is nothing more than a scam. “That’s how Craig Wright tried to fool us,” writes security researcher Robert Graham. “Craig Wright magically appears to have proven he knows Satoshi’s private-key, when in fact he’s copied the inputs/outputs and made us think we calculated them. It would’ve worked, too, but there’s too many damn experts in the blockchain who immediately pick up on the subtle details.”

Other experts took an even stronger stance on the matter; “Yes, this is a scam. Not maybe. Not possibly,” says Dan Kaminsky, “Wright is pretending he has Satoshi’s signature on Sartre’s writing. That would mean he has the private key, and is likely to be Satoshi. What he actually has is Satoshi’s signature on parts of the public Blockchain, which of course means he doesn’t need the private key and he doesn’t need to be Satoshi.”

Wright has said he will be providing more evidence soon by moving a coin from “an early” bitcoin block. However, a few days ago he made a blog post titled ‘I’m Sorry’ where he claims he did ’not have the courage’ to continue with his effort to prove he is Satoshi. He never actually conceded that he was lying about the whole thing, and ends the post by saying ‘I can only say I’m sorry. And goodbye’.

Although it left us with more questions than answers, Wright’s blog post was a fittingly bizarre end to a wholly strange episode. Will we ever know who created Bitcoin?